Cauli wobbles

Jim Pearson's talk on caulis at the recent Scottish Branch seminar was refreshing in as much he didn't reveal any great secrets to growing good caulis. Jim doesn't have soil analyses done, doesn't spray with any chemicals such as Decis, and doesn't believe in counting back so many days from a show for a sowing date as he believe this makes no odds whatsoever, and makes four sowings per year on 25th April, 5th May, 15th May and 25th May. As Jim has won the National more than anyone else with caulis i'm not going to argue with that. He prepares trenches in the Autumn and lines them with home made compost from his compost bins. Once he runs out of compost he uses kitchen waste, backfills the trenches and by the time Spring comes around everything has rotted down and added fertility and structure to the soil. He also adds a sprinkling of blood, fish and bone a few weeks before planting and a handful of Levington Organic Blend Farmyard Manure. In mid-February he will lime the whole plot and leave for the rain to wash it in.




As i'm not going to grow any white spuds next season I will have spare land enough to get about 4 rows of caulis in, at a 2'x2' spacing. Jim grows 179 caulis and when asked why 179, he replies because he hasn't the room to grow 180! I'm hoping to get my trenches prepared this weekend with a view to allowing the winter frosts (we still haven't had one!) to break everything down in the next few months before planting. One thing I will be doing is cutting some DPC material into 4" squares with a slit to the centre to act as barriers to cabbage root fly. Jim goes one step further, by cutting squares of carpet with another slit which he lays on top of the DPC with the slit at 90 degrees to each other, in effect giving him double the barrier. There is a chunk of leftover carpet in my loft that I have earmarked for this purpose.



There were several other tips which I made a note of and will be divulging next season at the requisite times. I've never managed to stage a good set of caulis and assumed my soil has always been wrong for them, and gave up growing them about 4 years ago, but this is a simplistic view so i'll be giving them another go in 2011. I may need a set of three for my Malvern collection but one thing's for sure.....I won't be anywhere near Jim's winning set from Dundee in 2010.

The Basil Fawlty of the world of pottery!

Just imagine for a moment, the barrage of swear words that came out of Monsieur Unsworth's mouth when his parents unveiled his costume for their latest market stall.

Would you buy a pot from this man? Would you even approach without bursting into tears? Hilarious or what? This made my weekend!

Mess

There's a magical hour or so, for me around 2pm on the 3rd Saturday in July, when you realise everything is either planted, sown or growing as it should do. When you can wander round the plot, cup of tea in hand, smugness personified. All your tools are where they should be. There are no weeds. Plant supports are in place. Grass borders are edged perfectly. The car is shiny. Even the dog is clean.

I don't know what causes it but a blue touch paper is then lit and your garden goes off like a firework explosion, and you never get it back under control, as Nature goes on an orgy of production. Once show season starts you've got no chance, and it will be several months before you find the secateurs you used for cutting a marrow before the first show. My lawn edging shears usually surface from a pile of potato peat around mid-April and i've got more trowels waiting to be rediscovered that i've buried over the years than B&Q have got on display.

In short my garden is an utter disgrace at this time of year. It does cross my mind to lay the whole lot down to lawn or a top dressing of concrete, but then I can see parsnips, leeks, beetroot, turnips and tomatoes waiting to be picked, with plenty of spuds and onions in store and realise why I do it..

And as we haven't even come close to a frost the dahlias are still blooming. Maybe I'll start the big tidy up next weekend!

1 today

Happy birthday to my little ray of sunshine!

Things I have learned in Scotland this week

1) It is sometimes NOT misty on the mountain tops. I had an absolutely glorious walk up Beinn Ime today, walking via the high pass alongside the craggy 'Cobbler' which I shall save for another day.....and when I feel brave enough to go through 'the eye of the needle' (look it up!).
2) Sea otters are thriving. I saw a pair of them yesterday and it was a superb sight.
3) Scotland has the funniest sitcom on TV. Why do we not get 'Still Game' in England? Imagine 'Last of the Summer Wine' set in Glasgow....but funny. Hilarious. Brother bought me series one on DVD.

Back home to Blighty and Oscar tomorrow :o)

matt Munro

First walk of my scottish mini-holiday today, along Glen Fyne and then up Ben Bhuide (attempted!). It was a beautiful walk, if a little slippery in places and I ended up on my Sherie Plumb on several occasions. As it was getting late and mist shrouded the top I decided to leave the summit for a clearer day when the views are reported to be superb, turning back at about 2800'.

I'm now soaking my tired limbs once more and for the benefit of several guys who (rather worryingly!) approached me at the superb Scottish seminar and said they enjoyed my last bathtime photo (names not revealed until the Christmas Smithyveg awards) I hereby post another to keep them happy. I do so to illustrate the joys of taking a bath/shower/wash in Argyll. The water is BLACK! The reason being it comes from a boggy reservoir a few hundred feet up the local hillside. You get used to it eventually and it does make your skin feel incredibly soft afterwards. However, in the spring you also get bits of mashed up frog that strayed too close to the filter!

Off on me 'ols!

After all the drama and tribulation of the last week I have mixed feelings about my forthcoming trip up to Scotland next week. Saturday marks the annual Scottish Branch of the NVS seminar, where for 8 quid you get three speakers and the chance to buy items that are unavailable in the garden centres. Speakers this year include Peter Glazebrook on onions and Jim Pearson on caulis and as I'm hoping to improve my onions next year, and actually grow a cauli worth showing having struggled in the past, these are two very timely talks as far as i'm concerned.




From there it will be up to my brother's on the Kintyre peninsula for a few days walking. However, he informed me that there is a ceilidh (pronounced kaylee...huh?) in the village church hall on the Saturday night for which there is compulsory attendance. I've been to these shindigs with him and his family before and believe me they are one of the most terrifying things you'll ever experience. I'm convinced they were invented purely to make visiting englishmen look like pricks. And believe me.....when i'm 'ceilidhing'.....I look like a prick. My sister-in-law seems to take great delight in sending me the wrong way and I always end up with my face in some huge scottish lady's boobs, or holding hands with an enormous bearded bloke with big teeth who takes a worrying delight at doing so. And because the church hall is 'dry' there is no alcohol to soften the pain. I feel very, very trepidacious!

Don't do that again!

Don't know what i'm going to do with this wee monkey. Little sod reduced the wild man of the NVS to tears yesterday. I'd rushed home to find paramedics trying to revive him before he was whisked off to hospital in an ambulance with full blues and twos. By the time I saw him he looked like this, little bugger. I thought he was a goner but to be honest I think he's turning into a bit of a drama queen....just like his grandad! Scared the living shit out of me.

As I write he's still in hospital undergoing various tests but it appears to be some sort of inexplicable seizure, similar to the one I had in Llangollen when I saw my stumps were unplaced!

Onions 'dressed' and onions 'as grown'

Surprised no-one has asked me about these definitions before as I've seen it cause more than it's fair share of confusion. I've even see one set of 'dressed' onions have a little paper shirt and tie affixed to them but that wasn't exactly to do with confusion rather than the exhibitor in question being a bit of a twat.




I've been stewarding a show when the judge has complained to me about the 'as grown' onions having all the soil still hanging from the roots, when the exhibitor has literally pulled them up and plonked them down on the bench. He was upset that he got wet soil over his trousers which was fair enough. Even though the term 'as grown' is used you should still give your onions some TLC. First and foremost make sure all soil is knocked from the roots. They don't need to be washed as you would leek roots, just free from the worst of the dirt and in a presentable condition. I would also go as far as taking off all the old, brown, fleabitten leaves and any loose skins, but be aware that this could potentially leave you open to being NAS'd by a pernickity judge who deems them to be not 'as grown'. I would say that most growers would be tidying up their onions as they grow so this would be a perfectly acceptable way of displaying 'as grown' onions.

In my opinion it's a lot better spectacle than this

But just be aware of my proviso and check with your show manager if in any doubt.



Contrary to the comedian who drew a tie and jacket on a set of onions, 'dressed' means simply well ripened, uniform bulbs with the roots cut flush to the root plate and the tops tied neatly with RAFFIA. Try and get into the habit of using raffia if you can, even if your show schedule doesn't specify it, as there will come a time when you will be NAS'd for using green string, elastic bands, green tape....believe me I've seen them all used at local level and they look truly awful. Even in a village show a judge will struggle to take you seriously if you don't tie your tops with raffia.

Kneed a break

Today was the annual 15.7 mile Seagrave Wolds Challenge walk that I have done for the last 5 years, this year with a very badly injured knee. What a soldier I am. Currently enjoying a well deserved soak in a hot bath. The toys are NOT mine!

I also managed to get a snap of one of my walking pals Alan against the infamous sign that he head twatted on last year's walk......and I mean TWATTED! He's just about forgiven the rest of us for spending the next 5 miles giggling helplessly like little kids.

Kids tried to get me to go on this....

.....I told them to.......

Hook a duck!

Loughborough Fair 2011

We have a huge street fair every year....since medieval times actually.

Leesa really enjoyed her trip on the baby train and clanging the bell!

All change

I was 3rd with long carrots at Derby (out of 3!), Dave T being 1st and 2nd, but to me this photo is significant for a number of reasons. Albeit these were literally the last 3 long carrots I had left to pull but all season I was getting lovely clean carrots, with nice shape and form but struggling to get any weight on them, and if i'm honest they've been going downhill for a few years as I've tweaked my mixes from one season to the next. It's all the more frustrating as I had the biggest, freshest, healthiest looking tops for many a year so I was really hopeful of pulling some decent long carrots this season, which is why it's quite significant seeing mine against Dave Thornton's on the show bench. I saw his carrots at his garden a number of times during the season and always came away quite smug as his foliage always seemed quite small and spindly compared to mine. However, in August just before the National Championships he showed me the shoulders of a couple of his carrots and they were very large, totally out of proportion to the tops in my opinion so I was quite confused once I started pulling my own. At Derby he even displayed one carrot in the tap root collection that was the biggest I have ever seen, i'm not joking when I say it must have been at least 6" diameter.

It's a similar situation i'm thinking to dahlias. I've had dahlias before that have huge tops but when you come to dig up the tuber in the autumn for storage there is barely a root worth saving. Perhaps i've simply overfed my carrots to the detriment of the root which of course is the important part as far as we're concerned. Or perhaps I'm expecting too much from an old mix that has served me well over the years at local level and indeed is still more than good enough to win most of my local shows, but if I want to take the next step up I need to rethink things. So I sought the advice of National Tap Root Champion Ian Simpson and he told me that he used Graeme Watson's mix which was 4 gallons of sieved Levington F2S and 3 ounces of calcified seaweed. I thought perhaps he must have clicked 'send' on the email before he'd finished typing the rest of the mix so I asked for confirmation and he replied that indeed is all he used for his carrots last season. He feels that there is enough nutrient in the F2S to last the season and overfeeding gives coarse skins. So what the hell, i'm going to try it next season and see if I start to get better results. It certainly makes things a lot simpler and should mean I'm able to get my holes bored and filled in record time if nothing else.

Up a gum tree

I mean business with onions next season. I shall be installing a new greenhouse in which to grow some in large pots but before that I needed to make sure I could provide it with as much light as possible. With that in mind I had to fell three trees that made my intended location for the new glasshouse quite shady, including this 50' eucalyptus. It was also leaning over next door's property quite a bit as the miserable titwitch who lives next door never ceased to remind me. So I was recently to be found thus, topping out said tree before a pal chainsawed it down to ground level. Health & Safety would have shite their trollies!

Propagating leeks

I'm doing something this season that I've been meaning to do for the past few years, that is putting down one of my show leeks to produce baby leeks next season for growing on and showing in 2013! It's not something i've ever done before but I remember seeing it done nearly 20 years ago when I visited an uncle who lives in the north-east leek hotbeds around Sunderland. I chose one of my best shaped Pendle Improved and cut off the bottom 6" or so thus;

Now, the outer layers of flesh will simply rot off in time so you may as well cut them off now, so that the leek is now roughly the same diameter as the base plate. All the old roots are also cut off as these are now dead and useless. The inner core of leaves has already started to re-grow.

I prepared a 6" pot with some old potato peat and 1/3 vermiculite with a pinch of general purpose fertiliser, stuck in a couple of canes and plastic clips, then put the leek in thus, about an inch deep.

The leek should soon re-root and start to grow away in my conservatory over Winter, and I'll be logging the progress over the next 10 months or so until hopefully I can strike some bulbils (or baby leeks) around October 2012.

As I say, this is the way i've been told to do it so if anyone has any different ideas then let me know.

I am a judge!

Just had it confirmed that I passed the recent NVS judges exam, with 90% on the theory and 81% on the practical. Wonder when I can judge the National?!?

Keep 'em coming

Some toms have soft skins and some have fairly hard skins, my question is when being judged what type of toms would the judges prefer to see to enable them to award points. If the judge put to much pressure on the tom and it split how would he decide how to point it although it was of the right size and condition?



I'm assuming you've grown a variety such as Gold Star in the past which has thin skins and is notoriously prone to splitting during transit. You always had to take spares with you but sometimes they split after you had staged them and left the hall! Nowadays Cedrico is the one to beat as it's what is known as a vine ripe variety that stays firm on the trusses for weeks in good condition and is a lot less prone to splitting. Irregular watering followed by a deluge is one reason why tomatoes will suddenly split so make sure you stick to a regular watering and feeding regime.

In theory judges don't have favourite varieties but should judge each exhibit on merit. A well grown set of an old variety such as Shirley can win against a poorly grown set of Cedrico no problem. The judge should handle each and every vegetable during his deliberations to decide on the placings, but he should do it with confidence and care, so with tomatoes that means not putting so much pressure on them that he clumsily pierces the skins. However, if a tomato split during normal handling then i'm afraid it would have to be downpointed on condition as it would signify an over-ripe and soft skin, or one that had been poorly grown for reasons mentioned above.

The first questions are in!

If any of my more esteemed & experienced chums have anything to add please feel free to comment.


1) How do you remove the tomato from the plant, with calyx attached---I suspect it should be obvious, but I don't know!.
No great technique required to this, just a bit of care. Make sure you have a compartmentalised carry box of some description with soft tissues to protect the fruits once picked. Support the tomato as if you were cradling one of your own bollocks, then snip the stalk of the calyx past the 'knuckle' with sharp scissors. Careful not to pierce the skin with the end of the scissors. I like to leave the stalk as long a stalk as I can get as I think this stands out and I know this was the method favoured by Charlie Maisey, but it's only a personal preference. Cut just past the knuckle if you prefer.

2)Is there an optimum pea size? I didn't grow many last year but intend to grow more next season. Many of my pods when left on the plant at maturity resulted in the peas showing bulges on the outside of the pod. Is this expected and necessary to be successful on the show bench?
The short answer to this is no there isn't an optimum pea size. The NVS Judes Guide states pods should be long, fresh, smooth well-filled pods with good bloom and colour. In practice that means getting 9 (or more - see schedule) pods that are as large as possible for the variety without pea bulge (this is considered a fault therefore) or going over on skin condition. At National level you need pods with 11 or 12 peas in them although at local level 10 would be very good. But bear in mind that size only carries 4 points out of the total 20 on offer and as with most show vegetables is a relatively small proportion of the points on offer. Condition scores up to 6 points, uniformity 4 points, fullness of pod 4 points and colour 2 points so for local level just grow a mildew tolerant variety as unless you live in Scotland or the North you will struggle to exhibit 'Show Perfection' past mid-August. If you have a variety that only has 8 peas in, but you can get nice clean pods benched, all the same size with no bulge then go for it. Peas need to be picked at their optimum condition, and they only last in a perfect state for 5 or 6 days so you need to time your row to make sure you have plenty to choose from. Show Perfection takes approx. 80-85 days from sowing to showing depending on location and climactic conditions during growth.

3)I'm hoping to show at some local shows next year. My difficulty is to choose what veg to show and how many of each individual veg' to grow to give me a chance. (i.e. to get a uniform set of 3 do I need to choose from 10? Also sowing intervals to give progression...... 4 weekly?


The scoring system and detail of what is expected, uniformity, size, condition & how this effects the scoring would also be useful.
Right, quite a few questions in this one. First of all scoring systems. You need to find out under what rules your show is being judged, whether it's RHS (more usual for village shows) or NVS rules. There are subtle differences between them but nothing to worry about if you concentrate on quality and uniformity above all else. Try and purchase a copy of The Horticultural Show Handbook 2008 ISBN 9781902896830 which you will find enormously useful if you're just starting out.

All vegetables are given a points value depending on how easy they are to grow, so you will find the hardest to grow well are termed '20 pointers' and include long carrots, parsnips, leeks, potatoes, large onions, caulis, long beet and celery. Other veg are deemed easy to grow well, such as small fruited tomatoes (12 points), pumpkins (10 points) and radishes (10 points). These points are broken down into 4 or 5 sections usually, so if we look at parsnips for instance under the NVS rules it is awarded a maximum of 6 points for condition, 4 for uniformity, 4 for shape, 3 for size and 3 for colour. Virtually without exception all vegetables will score highly if in good condition, although i'm afraid you need to be prepared for an untrained judge being blinded by size at a small village show.


If you're doing shows for the first time try not to be too ambitious. Ask yourself what you have personally grown well in the past and try and concentrate on these. In my opinion a good starting point for local shows would be tomatoes, globe beet, onions from sets, courgettes, potatoes, french beans, cucumbers, lettuce, peppers, cabbages and maybe short carrots grown in sandy raised beds. Don't get hung up on growing the biggest, but rather try and get matching specimens that are grown to perfection with few signs (if any) of damage from pest or disease. Really get close to your plants and learn how they grow, and try and spot any problems before they get too far out of hand. Remember, a perfectly grown small to medium set of onions can beat a huge set that is disease or pest damaged, non-matching or poorly shaped. You need to give yourself plenty of vegetables to choose from but don't go so mad that you can't maintain steady growth. It's better to mollycoddle a few to perfection than grow a field of mediocre specimens. With experience you'll be able to grow fewer specimens and still make good matching exhibits. Certain vegetables are quicker to grow to maturity such as beetroot which usually take 12-15 weeks. However, I have had them reach grapefruit size in 6 weeks so sow a row per week from mid-May until mid-June and you should cover the show season.

Back to basics

Well now, how am I going to pass the next few months before the seed sowing starts in ernest? I thought I could get back to basics and the real reason I started this blog, to explain the terminology of showing to beginners and novices, plus any tips on preparation and staging. So it's going to be over to you guys for the next few weeks. If anyone has any questions they need answering then drop me a line or post a comment and I'll do my best to reply as succinctly as possible. If I can't answer then I know people who can. It really doesn't matter how stupid you think the question is as we all started somewhere and I remember scratching my head myself as some of the things I read, wondering what was actually meant by it.




As a starter for 10, I'll begin with the wording in show schedules regarding the word 'dish'. I've been asked more than a few times about this, as people often think they actually have to exhibit all vegetables on a dish if the schedule calls for '1 dish of 3.....'. 'Dish' is merely a generic term used by schedule makers to denote a specified number of vegetables which can be displayed in a number of ways (unless specified in the schedule) for instance direct on the table (carrots & parsnips), on special 'homemade 'stands (onions) or actually on dishes (potatoes).



Therefore this is a 'dish' of potatoes....

But this is also a 'dish' of onions

And this is a 'dish' of carrots

Hope that helps.....any more questions?



p.s. Before any clever fucker asks, I will not answer questions such as ....why are you such a twat? What is the daily diet of a munchkin or a fucking oompa-loompah? Or why can't you grow peas?

Derby 2011

It seems strange to think that I probably won't be doing another show now until the Malvern National at the end of September 2012. In many ways I'm going to be 'taking a year out' as at this moment in time I don't intend to do any local showing next year, something I last did in 2000 when we had an extension to our house and I simply couldn't afford the time. The way I feel at the moment I just need to recharge the batteries and rethink my strategy from now on, as putting 30-40 entries in every weekend really takes its toll, and I didn't enjoy some shows as much as I should, in particular Malvern, Westminster and Derby all for different reasons.


For Derby I felt like shite, suffering from a severe dose of manflu in the days leading up to it, so I was chuffed to come away with 9 tickets. Pick of my bunch was a win in a Top Tray class of 8 entries thanks largely to a good set of 6 Cedrico tomatoes (at last!) that scored well along with 3 nice Sweet Candle stumps and 3 Kestrel spuds that weren't great in uniformity but did clean up nicely.

I didn't win with my globe beet which surprised me as that was the one class I thought was a nailed on ticket, even a first. I believe globe beet is the class that is the biggest lottery as it's usually well contested and indeed i've won shows where I didn't expect to so you win some, you lose some.

I was 2nd in the leek class, my set being the heaviest there but a strange bulge on one side of one of the barrels must have counted against me. I've never had it before but I think it's a side shoot and indeed you could see a secondary growth emerging from one of the leaf folds, almost like a mini-leek within the leek itself. Scottish Chair Jim Williams reported in the NVS magazine that he'd seen it on some of his leeks for the first time ever this season and wondered what the cause was. In my case i'm assuming it's stress related as I don't think I watered enough this season, especially during June, July and August when we hardly had a drop of rain to speak of.

I was 3rd in a strong parsnip class with 'Polar', a bit of canker (or was it carrot fly damage?) downpointing me. It's a shame I still get these markings as size and uniformity wise i'm on the money and the skins clean up pretty well too. I'm hoping that a thorough drenching of Jet 5 in the Spring will cleanse any spores and other nasties out of the sand as I hope to get a set of 5 at Malvern along with another three in the big collection class. When I got a best in show with 'Pinnacle' at Leicester Show a few years ago a respected fellow grower reckoned they would have competed at National level. They really did stand out and the skins almost shone but I've never had parsnips so blemish free since. I changed entirely to Polar this year as this variety was pretty clean for me last season but about 60% of them have been marked so I have a decision to make. Pinnacle is supposed to have the best canker resistance rating but does get a bit 'blocky' near the top I find so I'll probably stick to Polar as I think it has a more refined, tapering shape.

I always say you have to be in it to win it and I picked up an unexpected 3rd in the white spud class out of about 15 entries with Casablanca. These looked so bad on Friday night there was no way I could get them clean with a soft cloth so I had to resort to using the rough side of a scourer and rubbing the skin with that as hard as I dare. They looked reasonable when I staged them but as you can see by the Sunday afternoon they looked absolutely shocking. I'm not going to miss growing white spuds at all next season. They look magnificent when they're first harvested but boy do they deteriorate. Sherie Plumb must have some form of industrial buffing wheel in her kitchen!

I also won with brussel sprouts 'Abacus' at Derby, and with the trug prepared as usual by Leesa and which attracted an awful lot of interest from the general public, mainly from people enquiring about the little mexican gherkins that I use to fill in any gaps.

And so that's it. Time now to get the garden shipshape once again, install a new greenhouse that I intend to grow some decent onions in for once, and to get the old walking boots waxed ready for some Munros in Scotland in a couple of weeks time. I've learnt many things in 2011, proof that you will never stop learning and you need to store everything in the memory bank and take it with you into a new growing year. It's been my lowest haul of tickets for quite a few years because I did 4 less local shows than usual and tried my hand at a National Championships and Harrogate for the first time instead, but I feel I've still grown some of my best stuff ever, particularly stumps, leeks and celery that didn't look out of place at the highest level. I got more satisfaction from seeing my veg alongside the very best and winning nowt than I did winning 30+ tickets at my local show. And most important of all (by far!) I made some new friends at these new shows that I am looking forward to spending many more social evenings with in future years.

I did not bother growing a pumpkin this year.....

.......so we made do with this!